


After It's Wednesday

by triedunture



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s03e11 Mystery Spot, Kissing, M/M, Sibling Love, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-12
Updated: 2012-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-29 09:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triedunture/pseuds/triedunture
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After The Mystery Spot but before Dean's deal with the demons gets cashed in, an interlude. Maybe Sam is crazy. Maybe Dean isn't really here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After It's Wednesday

They're driving down the main drag in a shitty little town that's famous for two things, a minor Civil War skirmish and the annual garlic festival, when Dean sees three grown women playing on the bouncy bridge of the local playground. The women are in their late thirties, maybe forties, and are bundled up against the chill wind. They're laughing as they jump up and down in concert, the plastic-recycled planks of the bridge swaying and undulating beneath them like a big wave.

Dean turns to Sam, wanting to point it out to his brother because it's hilarious and Sam could use a laugh, especially after the Tuesday that never ended (except when it did, and fuck, Sam hasn't told Dean exactly what happened in those lost months, but Dean guesses from the way Sam's eyes harden and soften at unexpected moments that it wasn't good).

But Sam has seen the women already, is staring at them from his place in the passenger seat, a morose look on his long face.

"Lighten up," Dean says. "They're just having some fun."

Sam shakes his head and stares out the side window, where there isn't anything but bushes lining the sidewalk. Dean drives and keeps his mouth shut. He wonders what it was like, Sam driving the car alone, no body in the passenger seat, no one to lend a hand during a hunt. Dean knows what it was like when it was just him, the long eyelid-drooping nights at the wheel when dad was busy and Sam was in college. Dean had dealt with it in his own way, a lot of caffeine and talking to himself. But Sam isn't him, and Dean thinks about his brother sitting in the driver's seat, radio silent, nothing to keep him going except energy bars and anger.

"Want to swing on swings?" Dean asks as they sit at a red light. He turns a grin on Sam, who just snorts and huddles further into his seat.

"I just want to get to the motel," Sam says, and his voice is so weary, so much older than Dean remembers it being just a few days ago, that he can't keep himself from pushing further.

"Hey. So. What the hell happened while I was away?" Dean guides the car through the intersection, taking the turn off the main street towards the crappy motel of the week.

"Nothing. I mean, none of it was real. So forget it," Sam says. He scrubs a hand across his face; long, tan fingers with weirdly tapered joints. Dean supposes he must've gotten those hands from mom.

"But you remember it. So, to you, it's real." The Impala pulls into the motel parking lot, maneuvering into a space as far away from the office as possible. Dean cuts the engine and looks over at Sam. They don't move from the car.

"What happened, Sammy?" Dean asks again.

Sam's hand drifts to his flank, touching his ribs as if tracing an invisible scar. "I told you. You died. I hunted alone. It sucked."

Dean squints at him in the failing daylight. "Didn't think about, I don't know, quitting the job?"

"What?" Sam screws up his face like Dean's just suggested they eat babies or something. "Quit hunting?"

"Yeah." Dean shrugs. "It's just-- The thought didn't cross your mind? Go back to school, get that degree, all that pie in the sky stuff that--"

"Are you fucking serious?" Sam barks a laugh, but it's not in good humor. "Would you seriously have been okay with--?"

"Who cares what I would've wanted, Sammy?" Dean's trying to keep his voice level, but it's rising to crest over Sam's. "I was _dead_. I don't get a vote." He ducks his head, fiddles his fingers along the edge of the steering wheel. They breathe in silence for a long moment. "When I'm toast," Dean finally manages, "you don't have to keep up with the life just 'cause you think I--dammit Sam--just do whatever makes you happy."

Sam's jaw tic-tics at that. He stares down at his hands, clenched on top of his thighs. "Once you're gone...." Sam shakes his head, slow side to side, his nostrils flaring. He doesn't finish what he's trying to say, and Dean knows better than to keep pushing.

"C'mon." Dean shoves open the car door. "Let's get some shut-eye."

The motel room doesn't smell _bad_ , exactly, but there's a chemical tang in the air as if the owners are desperate to cover up something else. Dean crinkles his nose but doesn't mention it. They've had worse.

He's piecing apart his gun when he notices Sam undressing, his movements pained and jerky as he lifts his shirt over his head. "Stiff?" he asks, his voice purposefully light.

Sam whirls like he's surprised to find Dean still in the room. His bare chest rises and falls with short pants of breath. Dean runs a clinical eye over his brother's shoulders, set in a crooked line. Probably from being cooped up in the car all day, Dean figures. It still stuns him, how Sam has literally outgrown the Impala. Scrawny kid like that, you don't imagine them towering over you, but here they are.

"Want me to work out the knots?" Dean offers his hands, flexing them enticingly in the air.

And there go Sam's eyes. Soft, this time. Like he sees something Dean won't ever see.

"Is this real?" Sam asks, his voice a quiet whisper.

Dean drops his hands. "What?"

"Is this--you, alive, here, with me--is this real? Is this just the Trickster messing with my head again? Am I going crazy?" Sam claws his hands through his long hair like he wants to get at his brain and find the answer there. "Sometimes I don't know, Dean. Sometimes I don't fucking know."

Dean is there, close as he can be, arms around his brother's impossible frame, trying to hold him down on the ground, trying to keep him on his feet. "Hey, don't--! It's real, Sam, I'm real." He grabs Sam's hands in his. They're shaking and huge, easily engulfing his, and Dean rests them on his shoulders. "See? Solid. It's me. I'm here."

"Dean," Sam husks out, dry and desperate. His eyes are blown black with just the faintest rim of hazel lining the pupils. Dean nods, aching to reassure but not knowing what else to do. Sam's fingers clutch at his shoulders, slipping down to grip his upper arms with surprising strength. Dean allows it, not one flinch.

"I'm here," he repeats, and doesn't stop to think how long that will be true.

Sam stoops, and for one crazy moment Dean thinks Sam's trying to _smell_ him, nose his way into the crook of Dean's neck to inhale him like a drug. But that's not what Sam's doing. Sam's kissing him, lips chapped and warm, their mouths piecing together, a puzzle.

Dean backs off, dizzy. He stares up at Sam--his partner, his brother--and he doesn't have any words for what just happened.

"Once you're gone." Sam swallows. He doesn't need to say the rest, Dean gets it.

"Sam--" They haven't done this, not since before Sam left for Stanford. One weird night, a gunshot wound in Dean's thigh and Sam, all of eighteen years old, kneeling between his legs to pry the bullet from the skin. Delirious from pain, no pills to take. It wasn't anything, really: it was Dean's hand on the back of Sam's head, just resting there, and Sam looking up with those eyes of his, and Jesus fuck, they'd kissed. They had kissed and Sam was gone, leaving Dean behind. In his head, Dean knows some time must have passed between the kiss and Sam's departure; there had been forms to fill out and letters of acceptance to receive. But his memory connects the two events seamlessly. They kissed and Sam left.

Now they kiss, and kiss again, and Sam stays.

Dean wonders if Sam tried this during the Forever Tuesday, if he woke up one morning and looked at Dean and decided not to try saving him today, and kissed him instead. It's not like Dean would remember; it didn't really happen.

But he's willing to bet, from the way Sam is working his mouth, drinking him down, pressing his hands to Dean's face to keep him there, that Sam never did. And maybe Sam regretted it once Wednesday came.

Dean lets his eyes slide shut, lets Sam kiss him deeper. If this is what Sam needs, he thinks, then fuck it.

We're all dead soon anyway.


End file.
